Chapter Seven
Luke stalked toward the same open doors he’d entered through a minute ago when he’d been looking to track down his tardy client. She’d worked hard this morning, just like she had the entire week. He had no complaints about their momentum. Her conditioning was kicking in, and he planned to push her until they hit a wall, then back off and come at her from a different angle. He hadn’t seen the wall on the horizon yet, but that was before he’d walked into her kitchen and found her sneaking cookies while on a personal call with some fucker. Some fucker she missed.
The knowledge simmered inside him, uncommonly volatile, and for the sake of his sanity, he chose to condense it down to, No. Just no. Then he mentally shoved the mess into a compartment, slapped a “Later” label on it, and closed the lid.
Sneaking sweets to get through a difficult personal moment, though? That was something to tackle now, as well as something to draw a line in the sand over. The habit undermined their chances of success, and, more importantly in the long run, wasn’t an effective way to manage stress. He intended to put a stop to it, and he was prepared to use whatever method proved most effective.
He heard the patter of her cross-trainers against the cobblestone as she chased him across the courtyard.
“Wait. Luke…wait.”
He continued into the gym, picked up his tablet and water, and turned to face her.
She held up her hands and offered him a disarming smile. “Look, I’m not going to make excuses—the kitchen didn’t drop off my lunch.”
Impeccable timing. Great delivery. He didn’t return her smile. “Maybe you’re not taking this seriously, but I am. I have a business to run, and I put a vacation on hold for this.” His anger wasn’t entirely manufactured, because everything he said was true, but he’d expected the cheating. Most clients deviated from the plan at some point—often early in the process when the food cravings hit hardest and the results of challenging workouts and a better diet weren’t yet visible. “You’re not willing to do what it takes to succeed.”
“I am. I swear.” She rushed to him and raised her hands to his chest, as if her paltry hundred and twenty-five pounds could prevent him from moving. “I just lost track of myself for a moment.”
“I can’t monitor you 24/7, Quinn. Nobody can, other than you, and if you’re not up to the job, then we’re both wasting our time. This won’t work if I can’t trust you.”
“You can trust me. Please, Luke.” She looked up at him with a rare show of genuine panic in her eyes. “Give me another chance. I promise I’m not wasting your time. Let me prove it.”
This was exactly what he wanted from any client at this stage—the wavering stage—a renewed commitment to fight for the goal, and the determination to prove she could do it. But for some perverse reason, with Quinn, he couldn’t let it go at just words. “Prove it? How? Losing the role clearly isn’t a sufficiently immediate and motivating consequence for you. What possible consequence can I impose that’s more persuasive?”
Pink tinged her cheeks. She dropped her lashes, took a shuddery breath, and looked up at him again. “You’d have to…punish me.”
No. No, this was going down the wrong path, and yet he felt the inevitability of it even as he tried to put on the brakes. Gently, he warned, “You couldn’t handle it.”
“Try me. Let me prove you wrong.”
She licked her lips after she tossed out the suggestion. No. Not a suggestion. A dare, which was essentially a default setting for Quinn. He walked toward the door.
“Please.”
Etched-in-stone rules faded like weathered hieroglyphics on an ancient ruin. The exquisitely fucked-up convergence of exactly what he shouldn’t do, and exactly what she needed him to do twisted inside him, becoming a single, inescapable imperative. He closed the door and clicked the lock.
“Bend over the hyperextension bench and pull your shorts down.”
Her breath hitched, but a glimmer of relief shone in her eyes. “You dirty pervert.”
“Over the bench. Now. You’ve got five seconds.”
Hands slapped the sides of her thighs as her eyes darted around the gym. “Which one is the hyperextension bench?”
He pointed. She marched to the angled apparatus, hooked her heels behind the crossbar, and leaned into the padded bench designed to support her hips. Then she draped herself over it and gripped the handholds while she squirmed around looking for the least demanding position. Finally she reached around and slid her tight, white shorts down to expose the top half of her ass.
He drew in a breath to clear his head. Get his bearings. “Lower.” His voice sounded gruff to his own ears.
She made a compliant sound, and pushed the shorts down to bare her ass properly. He stepped up and ran a fingertip along the back of her knee brace—a reminder to both of them that she wasn’t as invincible as she liked to project. “Comfortable?”
“Just ducky. Wake me when you’re done.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll be very awake by the time we’re done.” He brushed his fingers up her leg, along her hip, and brought them to rest at the base of her spine. “Head up.”
All her muscles tightened as she obeyed.
“That’s good. Now, tell me the rule, Quinn.”
“W-what rule?” Her question revealed genuine confusion and only a little distress.
He placed his hand across the small of her back, reassuring. “The rule you broke. You know the one.”
“I…um…” She shifted again, as if the air itself itched her bare skin. “I’m only to eat the prepared menu, unless you tell me otherwise?”
“Exactly. And did I tell you to eat the cookies?”
Her head drooped. “No.”
“How many did you have?”
“Oh God. Three?”
He smoothed his hand over her back once more. “I think it was more like ten.”
“Five!” Her head popped up again. “I ate five.”
“Okay.” He patted her once and then removed his hand. “You’re going to count them off. Nice and loud. I want to hear each number clearly. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“Respond verbally, please.”
“Yes, dammit. I understand.”
“Are you ready?”
Her body tensed. “Yes.”
“All right. Let’s get started.” But then he waited another long moment. Waited until she dug her toes into the floor and pushed her hips up a barely perceptible degree. Not just consent. A request. Her low moan vibrated with anticipation.
He slapped his palm across one cheek…
“One,” she cried, then added a surprised, “two,” when he immediately backhanded the other unsuspecting cheek.
“That’s one,” he corrected, and watched a tinge of pink bloom across the smooth, pale skin. “Are you prepared for the rest of your punishment? Be sure of your answer, because I’m not going to stop and check in again.”
“I…yes. I’m prepared.”
He doled out the rest in rapid succession, giving her just enough time to draw in a breath after she called out each number. By the end, she was breathing heavy, her skin flushed with histamine-dilated blood vessels inflamed by the minor impact of his callused palm against her pampered ass. He was in a hell of his own making—a hell he’d entered as soon as he’d agreed to take her on. A hell that only got deeper and more damning the more time he spent with her. He wanted…
Unable to resist, he skimmed a fingertip low. She eased her thighs apart in what might have been a sneaky little move, except her body betrayed her. His head went light and his cock went heavier than humanly possible. If he accepted her subtle invitation, and instructed her to lift her hips, he’d find her hot and ready. But if he did that, right now, he wouldn’t have the self-discipline to leave without taking a taste. And once he catered to that pussy, she’d have all the power and she’d know it. He’d be the next thing to useless in terms of motivating her to follow the program. Instead, he drew a figure eight along her tender skin. Goose bumps rose in the wake of his touch. “Relax. We’re done with the preliminaries.”
She parted her legs as far as the shorts would allow. “There’s more?”
It took everything he had in him to keep some semblance of the higher goal in mind. The point was to break down her defenses and get to the true reason she undermined herself. “Yeah. Now we’re going to have some cognitive therapy.”
“Excuse me?”
“Time to talk.”
“I don’t need to talk.” Her rebuttal was instant.
He traced the figure eight again. “You don’t know what you need. That’s how you ended up here.”
“Fine.” She let the word out in a long-suffering sigh before she wrapped her hands around the handles and started to push herself up.
He restrained her by cupping the back of her neck. “No. Stay there. I didn’t tell you to move.”
“Luke…” Her hands fluttered up for an instant, like restless wings. “I can’t talk like this.”
She sounded more than a little distressed, which told him she felt vulnerable now that the predictable punishment was over. And that’s how he wanted her—vulnerable, unable to anticipate what came next, and less likely to muster up her typical countermeasures.
“That’s unfortunate.” Tempting his fraying control, he knelt and placed a whisper-soft kiss on a mark that hadn’t quite faded. A spot where he suspected the sting still lingered. “I thought you could handle this, Trouble. Apparently we’re just going through the motions.” He straightened and backed away.
“Okay, okay. Wait.” She lowered her head and wrapped her fingers around the handles, accepting his requirement. “What are we discussing?”
The compulsion to demand to know whom she’d been talking with hit him hard, but he banked it for two reasons. First, he wasn’t sure she’d tell him, and she’d be within her rights not to, because certain areas of her life were private. Second, the thirst to know originated in an uncharted part of him—a jealous, territorial part of him he hadn’t even known existed before he’d met her—but it sure as hell existed now. It didn’t care about rules, and he feared giving in to it at all would be like putting out a fire with gasoline. He didn’t need the information to get to the heart of her motives for cheating on her diet.
“Why did you break the rule?”
“I was hungry and distracted.” She lifted her hands in a jerky, exasperated gesture. “I barely even realized I was eating, much less what I was putting in my mouth.”
He came around to the front of the machine, crouched, and lifted her chin until their eyes met. Then he shook his head. “Uh-uh. You dug through all kinds of healthy options to get to those cookies. You sought them. Chose them. Try again.”
“Luke…”
“Quinn.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I don’t know. I was weak, and I thought I could get away with it. Satisfied?”
“Not at all. Look at me.”
When she did, every ounce of her acute misery shined like unshed tears. She honestly didn’t know. He steeled himself against her plea for him to tell her the answer, and continued. “We’ve got five weeks to figure it out.”
“Can’t wait.”
Because he heard the exhausted relief behind her go-fuck-yourself bravado, he let it slide. He’d pushed her far enough for one day. Just to remind her he was on her side, he hiked her shorts up and snapped them into place, before making his way to the door. At the threshold he paused. “You don’t like to show weakness to anybody. I get that. You prefer to handle your problems privately, on your own terms. I get that, too. But your coping mechanisms flat-out suck.”
Somehow, despite her position, she managed to roll a shoulder. “Add it to my list of flaws.”
“It’s not that simple. This particular flaw jeopardizes your goal, which makes it my problem. Luckily, I have a solution.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t say?”
“I do. For the duration of our time together, Quinn, you don’t have the privilege of exercising your own discretion. When you have a weak moment, you don’t attempt to deal with it on your own. You tell me. When you need help, you ask me. Day or night. Got it?”
“Yes.”
Her capitulation told him he’d wrung the fight out of her for today. He decided to press his luck. “Want to color in the rest of the picture about how sprained your knee?”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
Nope. She still had some fight in her. But he didn’t. “I think you do better with clear expectations, so let me make one more thing absolutely clear. I’m giving you my best, and I expect the same from you. Our contract requires you to follow the diet and exercise regimen I’ve designed to meet your goals. Anything less than full compliance and that deal isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. You’re not just wasting our time, you’re wasting your money, and we might as well cut our losses and call it quits. Take the rest of the afternoon to think that over.” He sure as hell couldn’t train her right now. He’d be spending the foreseeable future jacking off like his life depended on it. “I’ll see you here at nine tomorrow.”
…
Was praying for death a sin? It probably didn’t matter, because prayers or not, she was going to die. Soon. Sweating like a pig, while sitting spread-eagled on a godforsaken torture machine. The only hope Quinn clung to was that she wouldn’t beg for mercy first. With her eyes squeezed shut against the pain of that possibility, and the pain of her straining thigh muscles, she reinforced her hold on the grips by her sides and slowly pushed her knees together one more time…held for five seconds, and released…
The clang of the weights slamming back to their stack covered the sound of her groan. More or less.
“Keep your abductors engaged the entire time.” A strict finger drew a triangle high along the inside of her thigh while Luke’s cool voice issued instructions. “I don’t want to hear weights bang. I expect you to stay in control as you return to the starting position. Ten more. Proper form this time.”
Ten more? Oh God. She couldn’t do it.
You have to. He didn’t want to be there in the first place, wouldn’t be there except for the fact that he owed Eddie the favor, but if she didn’t hold up her end of their deal, would he call the contract void and leave?
She definitely couldn’t let that happen. She needed him. She’d made progress, yes, but she wasn’t in top form yet, and she definitely couldn’t do this to herself. Which was why she’d been on her best behavior for the last two weeks—since he’d ordered her over a bench and doled out discipline so staggering, she still felt the aftershocks every time she thought about that afternoon. And she thought about it constantly. The real punishment hadn’t been the spanking, or his tough words in the face of her failure. No, it had been the way he deftly drove her need into the red zone and then left her there, aching and unsatisfied.
The punishment continued, every second of the day, with every brush of his body against hers, every correction he made to the angle of her back, or the position of her hips, or even her breathing. She thought of him when she dressed, giving attention to whether he would approve of the clothes. She thought of him when she ate, knowing he’d chosen the food. She thought of him when she soaked in the bath at the end of the day, easing each sore muscle he’d worked to the limit with ruthless expertise, making her more aware of her own body than she’d ever been in her life. She dreamed of him when she slept, and in her dreams, he didn’t walk away after spanking her. He stayed and did other things. Domineering things. Soothing things. Things that made her wake up sweaty and on the edge of an orgasm she never quite managed to capture. He’d reduced her to an agonized state she couldn’t escape, and couldn’t relieve.
Luke was in her head so deep, she worried she’d never get him out. Not just worried her, no, it scared her. Letting him get to her in such an unprecedented way was just plain dumb. At the end of this, they’d go their separate ways. Sooner, if she didn’t walk the line to his satisfaction.
“Let’s go,” he said, cracking an invisible whip. Her skin tightened in response to his order.
She gathered her strength for another rep, appalled by the inelegant grunt the effort provoked, but the strain of pushing her knees together against the resistance of the weights quickly burned any shame away. Struggling through the rep, performing the exercise exactly as he specified, sent her into a whole new sphere of agony.
“Good. Perfect. Give me nine more just like that.”
A glow of pride now accounted for some of the heat in her face. Okay, this struggle also gave her a whole new reality to confront. She wanted to meet his expectations not simply because she couldn’t afford to lose the role, or because she refused to give him the satisfaction of defeating her, but because she wanted to earn his praise. She wanted to please him.
“Hey, you’re not on a break. Knock these out. We’ve got other things to do today.”
She wanted to kill him. No, death was too easy. She wanted to torture him just like he was torturing her. Drawing on nothing but raw anger, she pumped out three more reps in rapid succession, but halfway through the fourth her muscles locked. She couldn’t push her knees together, but she didn’t have enough strength to let the weights down lightly, as he’d instructed. And if she didn’t follow instructions, she’d hand him the excuse he was waiting for. So she froze there, breathing heavy, unable to continue but afraid to admit she couldn’t.
“Do we have a problem?”
There was absolutely no compassion in his question. Only expectation. Expectation she had to meet, because falling short gave all his unfounded initial impressions of her the basis he needed to write her off as a lost cause.
Her legs quivered. “No,” she lied. “I just need…” She bit her lip, because otherwise she really would beg.
“Look at me.”
She forced her eyes open and focused on him. He knelt in front of the abductor machine, his inscrutable gaze leveled on her. His smoothly shaved cheeks weren’t flushed from exertion. His finger-combed hair wasn’t dripping with sweat. The sadistic bastard looked cool, and inexcusably handsome. She tried to hold on to the resentment, use it for strength, but a slippery panic was too all-encompassing to leave room for anything else.
“What do you need, Quinn?”
“Nothing. I—” Fuck it, her legs were going to give out. The weights were going to fall. She was going to lose.
“Six more,” Luke prompted.
A combination of sweat and failure burned her eyes. Her vision blurred. “I—I can’t.” She coughed an oversize sob from her throat. “I can’t.”
“Uh-uh.” His voice came from very nearby now. He’d leaned in close. “You don’t say those words to me. Ever. What do you say?”
“I don’t know. I don’t.” Screaming muscles erased her ability to think. Everything was breaking down—mind, will, body. All she could do was sit there, panting and trembling, as tears scalded her cheeks and her world condensed into waves of pain…from overtaxed muscles, from falling short. From being reduced to begging. “Please?”
She didn’t think the situation could get any more unbearable, but then Luke’s big hands settled between her legs. Long fingers grazed the abbreviated hem of her yoga shorts. A sudden bolt of need introduced new pain. Her breath hitched. Urgency gripped her, renewing her struggle to push her knees together so parts of her, ridiculously desperate for his touch, wouldn’t be so susceptible.
“I appreciate the manners, but no. That’s not it. Try again. What do you want from me right now?”
“Help?” Blind instinct pushed the word from her lips, and as it echoed around the room, some reinforcement inside her broke. She cried the word again—literally cried it—without the armor of a quick retort, or face-saving follow-up.
“Finally.”
The next thing she knew, he took the burden of the weight from her. Slowly and carefully, he guided her thighs apart, releasing her agonized muscles from the device. Relief had her slumped against him, face pressed to his chest while a brewing cauldron of emotion she’d pushed to some back burner bubbled over in incoherent sobs.
Anger boiled hottest. Anger at Callum, for hurting himself, and then her. If she really wanted to, she could blame him for every aspect of her current predicament. But no, she reserved plenty of blame for herself. She should have called him out sooner—when he’d first started disappearing at odd hours, and cash started disappearing from her wallet—instead of floating along on the path of least resistance until it just wasn’t possible anymore. Guilt brewed, too, for giving in to the urge to hide her suspicions and pretend everything was all right simply because she wanted it to be. Hope could be a dangerous thing, and disappointment tasted very bitter.
All the anger, disappointment, and bitterness tumbled out of her in a ragged, inarticulate torrent of desperation. “I’m sorry…I need help…please, don’t leave.”
Luke held her to him with one hand at the nape of her neck. The other made long, slow sweeps along her thigh. “Be still. I’m not going anywhere.”
She was clinging to him. Clinging, and bawling, and drenching his shirt. Jesus, she hadn’t broken down like this since…hopefully she’d never broken down like this, but now that the dam had burst, she couldn’t seem to stop the tears. The realization created its own kind of panic, but maybe Luke picked up on it, because even as she stiffened, he tightened his hold and kept her in place.
His patience helped her get control of herself. Sort of. Her breaths still ended in pathetic little whimpers, but she started to notice other things—the solid cushion of his pec supporting her forehead, and the slow, steady drum of his heart. “You’re looking for an excuse to leave.” Even as she said the words, she snuggled into him, lifting her face to the underside of his jaw so she could inhale the scent of his aftershave.
His hand stilled on her leg. “I’m not leaving you, Trouble.”
The genuine surprise in his voice sent her heart into a reckless little spin, until he added, “I made a commitment.”
“To Eddie,” she muttered, as disappointment shackled her chest.
“To you, Quinn.” He tried to lift her chin, but she burrowed her face against his throat. “I made a commitment to you, and I’m not going to break it. Behave badly. Push all my buttons. Do your worst, because I can take it. There’s no way I’m leaving.”